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were filed. In 1985, Chambliss died in jail, never ideologies and became the media’s latest folk devil.
having publicly admitted to his role in the bombing. Racist skinheads appeared as the villains in movies,
Three years later, the case was briefly reopened when police dramas, and TV talk shows, going so far as
Gary Tucker, a suspect who was dying of cancer, breaking one host’s nose in a 1988 brawl on the Ger-
admitted that he had helped set the bomb. Again, how- aldo Rivera Show. The characterization of skinheads
ever, no new charges were filed. In 1994, another key as “racist terrorists” can be misleading, as skinheads
suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died. come in many varieties and engage in various levels of
In July 1997, the FBI once again opened the inves- skinhead activity. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, skin-
tigation. A federal grand jury in Jefferson County, heads have routinely been linked to hate crimes, polit-
Alabama, began hearing evidence in October 1998. On ical extremism, and bias-motivated terror; by 1990,
May 4, 2000, Bobby Frank Cherry, in jail in Texas for more than half of violent racial assaults were attributed
raping his stepdaughter, turned down a deal in which to skinheads.
he would receive probation in exchange for pleading The lifestyle known as “skinhead” emerged from
guilty of transporting explosives across state lines. On the plethora of British youth subcultures in the late
May 17, 2000, he was extradited to Alabama, where he 1960s. Amid well-documented groups, such as mods
and Thomas Blanton, Jr., surrendered to authorities. and rockers, skinheads appeared as, essentially, a
Both were indicted on four counts of first-degree working-class response to the more middle-class hip-
murder and four counts of “universal malice.” pies. Their style and ideology were designed to be
A year later, Blanton was tried, convicted, and polar opposites to the hippies (long hair/shaved head,
sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder. feminine/masculine, classless/class identified, etc.).
Blanton’s conviction relied heavily on dozens of Much of their tastes in clothing and music came
conversations between Blanton and Mitchell Burns, a directly from their young British economic classmates
former Klansman turned FBI informant. These conver- from the Caribbean. The skinheads adopted the styles
sations were secretly recorded with a microphone and love of ska music from the black “rude boys.”
planted by the FBI in Blanton’s house in 1964. In May The black roots of skinhead style were tested in the
2002, Cherry, at age 71, became the last Klansmen to be 1970s when British unemployment skyrocketed.
convicted for what is considered by many the worst Skinhead youth saw recent Indian and Pakistani
incident in the civil rights struggle. As many as 18 other immigrants as cultural interlopers and as competitors
investigations of Klan-related and/or civil rights-era for jobs and a place in the economic sun. Neo-fascist
murders are currently active. Authorities believe this is political movements, such as the National Front,
the last chance to prosecute for these crimes, many of began indoctrinating skinheads into racist ideologies
which date back more than 40 years, as most of the that included blacks as targets. Skinhead violence
accused were middle-aged men at the time of the crimes moved from “hippie bashing” to “Paki bashing” and
and are now near the end of their lives. then to attacking anyone and anything that seemed to
threaten white working-class masculinity. Skinhead
See also KU KLUX KLAN
music, often called “Oi! music,” moved toward racist
themes. Popular bands, like Skrewdriver, attracted
Further Reading
skinheads with themes of racially returning Britain to
Hamlin, Rev. Dr. Christopher M. Behind the Stained Glass: the world dominance it enjoyed as a colonizer.
A History of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Birm- By the mid-1980s, skinheads were becoming more
ingham, AL: Crane Hill, 1998. common in North America. They were usually seen
Sikora, Frank. Until Justice Rolls Down: The Birmingham as a subgroup of the punk rock subculture. As the
Church Bombing Case. Tuscaloosa: University of American economy went into decline in the late 1980s
Alabama Press, 1991.
and early 1990s, skinheads were quickly recruited by
racist and neo-Nazi groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan,
SKINHEADS the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and the New
Order. Reports of skinhead violence against homosex-
uals, leftists, Jews, the homeless, and ethnic minori-
In the late 1980s, shaven-headed youths called ties made national news. Most noteworthy was the
“skinheads” espoused white supremacist and neo-Nazi murder of an Ethiopian university student by three